Loving a Prince Charming - By Danielle Monsch Page 0,32

are always behind me. I’m never alone, and I’m never scared that something I say or do can drive you away. How can it? You’re braver than I’ll ever be.”

“No, not braver,” she replied, tears welling in her eyes but her smile bright and shining. “Just aware that no matter the price, it’s worth paying as long as I’m with you.”

He leaned close and laid his forehead against hers, taking strength from her. “He’s going to disown me,” he whispered.

“We’ll think of something,” she whispered back. “I’ll hire myself out as a bounty hunter or a tracker and lead manhunts, and you can watch everyone’s kids until we get back.”

Seth laughed, and the sound was bright and airy. He was free. He could live his life with her. “Deal.”

He leaned down to kiss her, but Matthias’s voice stopped him. “Seth, Kira – King Thomas and I have something to say.”

Seth looked at the men. It struck him then how old they both appeared, how worn, and the barest brush of sympathy for them rushed over him. It wasn’t just he and Rosamund who had survived the curse. It had eaten away at these two men as well – was in part what turned them into the hardened rulers they were.

Matthias held his head high and looked straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with all of them. “I make no apologies for what I have to say,” he began.

He felt Kira’s movement beside him and turned to look at her. Kira’s eyebrows drew hard together and she gave a questioning look to Seth. He shook his head. He had no idea where the king was going with this either.

Matthias continued. “I loved my daughter and I loved my kingdom. I did what I felt best, and I stand by that decision.”

Rosamund stood now as well, her look of confusion as vivid as Kira’s. Matthias did not look at her. If anything, his movements suggested he was avoiding her most of all.

Seth glanced at his father, and his father…his father looked resigned. Whatever this truth that Matthias was about to reveal, his father knew about it.

No, not just knew. His father was involved.

“Long ago, there was a servant in the castle, a young, unmarried woman. She died in childbirth the same night my queen gave birth to the princess. No one claimed the babe.”

Rosamund’s arms wound around her waist, the already pale skin ghost white.

“I knew there was a possibility of something happening during my daughter’s naming – I knew enough of the Elf King’s pride to make plans against it. I decided to present that child instead of my daughter to the kingdom.”

His voice was as flat as anyone else discussing the weather. Seth’s head spun. Rosamund was cursed during the naming. But the baby at the naming was not the king’s daughter, which meant Rosamund…

Rosamund.

I’m so sorry.

Betrayal etched itself deep into Rosamund’s features, her body bowed in pain. She was a small, broken thing, a little bird left alone in the highest branches of the tallest tree and no idea how to fly. “Are you saying,” she said, her voice a whispery bloodletting, “me? I’m not your daughter? I’m a sacrifice?”

“I never expected this curse,” Matthias said, a defense against the indefensible. “I never thought it would end like this.”

Rosamund didn’t speak. He saw her again as she was when they were children, the longing in her to see a tree and feel grass under her feet, the emptiness she fought from consuming her.

She had no words, so Seth spoke them for her. “No, you didn’t expect this,” he snapped, and any empathy he felt for the king was forever ended. “You expected her to die that day. At the time, all you worried about was how to reintroduce your daughter later without gaining the Elf King’s attention.”

Matthias’s color was high, his jaw clenched, and he said nothing further. Seth rounded on his own father. “What did you know of this?”

His father denied nothing. “It was best for the kingdom.”

Of course that would be his father’s response. Everything for the kingdom. His life, his marriage…wait. Wait. Why the frenzy about the marriage contracts? They never would have said anything if they were planning for Rosamund to remain the princess. That they told meant he was never going to marry Rosamund, and now with the curse over, they were going to reintroduce the real princess. “Where is the real princess now?”

Both rulers answered not with voice, but as one as their gazes